ICEGOV

Several years after the acceptance of Electronic Government by governments worldwide as part of their reform initiatives, there is a growing recognition that over-reliance on technology, insufficient collaboration in government, lack of emphasis on building human capacity and inadequate public consultation all limit possible benefits of such initiatives. As a result, the focus has been shifting from Electronic Government - technology-enabled improvements in government operations, to Electronic Governance - improvements in interactions between government and non-government stakeholders. Under the new focus, it is no longer acceptable to let technical or organizational issues drive these initiatives alone. Instead, a multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder, community-oriented approach is needed.

This volume contains the papers presented at the 1st International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV2007) which took place in Macao during 10-13 December 2007. ICEGOV2007 was co-organized by the Center for Electronic Governance at United Nations University - International Institute for Software Technology (UNU-IIST-EGOV), the Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, State University of New York, USA (CTG), and the United Nations Asian and Pacific Training Centre for Information and Communication Technology for Development (APCICT), Incheon, Republic of Korea.

In a diverse international setting of networking and community-building, the conference brought together practitioners, developers and researchers from government, academia, industry and non-governmental organizations to share the latest findings in the theory and practice of Electronic Governance. The conference provided a unique opportunity for close interactions between the three categories of participants, so that each could benefit from the interaction with others. Government participants described concrete initiatives, lessons learned and the remaining challenges. In return, they learned about the latest research results, and how such results are implemented by industry and other governments to address the challenges they face. Industry and non-governmental participants demonstrated concrete technological and organizational solutions for governments. In return, they learned about the challenges faced by governments and the latest research findings available for developing solutions. Academic participants presented models, theories and frameworks which extend the understanding of Electronic Governance and upon which concrete solutions can be built. In return, they learned about the problems faced by governments, gaining access to concrete cases, and identifying opportunities to implement and deploy research prototypes.

ICEGOV2007 benefited from invited talks from three well-known experts and practitioners: Sharon S. Dawes, Senior Fellow at the Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, State University of New York, USA, and the President of the Digital Government Society of North America; Olu Agunloye, Executive Vice Chairman of the National eGovernment Strategies (NeGSt) Limited, Nigeria, and Guido Bertucci, Director of the Division for Public Administration and Development Management, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations. The speakers represented academic, government and non-governmental perspectives on Electronic Governance.

In addition, a series of six tutorial-workshop events was organized on various aspects of Electronic Governance: (1) Formal Engineering Methods for Electronic Governance by Jim Davies, Oxford University, UK and Tomasz Janowski, UNU-IIST-EGOV, Macao; (2) Interoperability in Electronic Government by Marijn Janssen, TU Delft, Netherlands, and Jochen Scholl, University of Washington, USA; (3) Knowledge Management in Public Administration by Maria Wimmer, University of Koblenz, Germany, and Roland Traunmüller, University of Linz, Austria; (4) Electronic Governance and Organizational Transformation by Theresa A. Pardo, CTG, University at Albany, SUNY, USA and Yuanfu Jiang, China National School of Administration, China; (5) Policy Development for Electronic Governance by Ik Jae Chung, University at Albany, SUNY, USA; and (6) Economics for Electronic Governance by Wojciech Cellary, Poznan University of Economics, Poland. Tutorials, held on Monday 10 December provided the audience with general foundations and basic understanding of the area, while the workshops, held on Thursday 13 December presented state-of-the-art research and applications.

Regular paper sessions took place on Tuesday and Wednesday 11 and 12 December, interleaved with panel discussions. The sessions comprised presentations of the papers submitted for the conference and accepted after a thorough, three-stage review by the International Program Committee: from abstracts, through full papers, to final papers. Altogether, 159 abstracts and 130 full papers were submitted from 53 countries. A total of 97 papers were received from 27 developing countries: Argentina, Bangladesh, Benin, Brazil, China, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, India, Iran, Kenya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Russia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Tunisia and Vietnam, and 61 from 26 developed countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Macao, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Serbia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK, United Arab Emirates and USA. Among 159 submissions, 63 were research papers, 74 were practice papers and 22 were solutions papers. After review, 33 submissions were accepted as long (10 page) papers, 38 as short (4 page) papers, and 20 as posters (2 pages). The papers in the volume are organized into 18 sections: one for invited papers, six for workshops, ten for regular papers and one for posters. Regular paper sessions cover a range of topics from e-Participation, Diffusion and Implementation, through Innovative Applications, Development and Rural e-Government, to Cases, Research and Applications.